Shut Up, Laura

Today's Amazon deliveries consisted of:

* Dangermouse, the Complete Series
* Wallace & Gromit: Three Grand Adventures
* Sharpe's Collector's Edition DVD Box Set

An interesting note about Dangermouse - when the series was brought over to the USA from Britain, the American TV producers thought that the character of Stilletto would be offensive to Italian-Americans. So they overdubbed his accent with that of someone speaking an over-the-top-stereotypical Cockney instead. This means that I'm sitting here listening to him saying "Si, Baroni!", and I'm having an odd mental disconnect because I'm expecting to hear "OY, BARON!" instead.

There's the obvious point to be made here to the effect of: "So an Italian accent is offensive, but we can go about laughing at Estuary English mannerisms all the live-long day?" The point that I would like to make instead is that they missed a golden opportunity to use phrases like "pony and trap" to get past the censors - no one here would ever have been the wiser.

Anyway, I shall leave you with the following immortal words of wisdom:

"Penfold...shush!"